Tokenomics so far
The main purpose of the Seed token has been bootstrapping MetaGame.
It was an experiment in building without raising money first & the idea was that Seeds can only be created through labor.
2 Stakeholder types
- Players, generating & earning Seeds by working on MetaGame
- Patrons, seeing the value being created & “watering Seeds” (adding Ether to the pool)
Something like this:
Where we are at now
We are 3/4 of the way through the “Seed phase”, wanting to finalize the “Phase II” tokenomics so we can move on with small-scale fundraising for the next 6-8 months.
Our newsletter & podcast are at a point where they can become self-sustainable through sponsorships, the platform itself reached 1.0 status with all the basic functionality live.
Going forward, Phase I (Seeds) > Phase II (Growth)
To recap: Players generate & earn Seeds, then sell or “plant” them. Patrons see the value, then buy or “water” Seeds.
This keeps MetaGame going until Phase II, when Seeds grow into Trees & there is a proper fundraise to propel explosive growth.
3 stakeholder types
- Users, paying for features & fees on the platform
- Members (players + patrons), burning a subscription & upvoting/crowdfunding features
- Guilds, buying & staking as buy-in, paying services, burning a subscription & upvoting/crowdfunding features
Sources of funding & value retention
In Phase II, the main source of funding will be the funding raised but MetaGame will also start generating revenue which will be flowing back into the token.
- Fundraise itself
- Sponsorships for the newsletter & the podcast, funding educational content
- Paid features on the platform, such as using search & filtering of player profiles (useful for finding contributors for projects), custom backgrounds & blocks on MyMeta & the dashboard.
- Upvoting Quests with tokens (so members & guilds can guide & incentivize feature prioritization)
- Focusing on integrations; other projects being naturally incentivized to build integrations for MetaOS & MyMeta as way of getting more users
- Other projects using MetaOS for their communities, thus being incentivized to build more features themselves
- Circular economy: having a market where people & guilds exchange services in Trees (it already happened that players offered work to others for Seeds & TEC offered their course). Upvoting other people’s posts with tokens, etc.
Going to Phase III - Equilibrium
In terms of tokenomics, Phase III is all about finding equilibrium & growing naturally rather than through external injections of capital.
Sources of funding & value retention are all of the above except “fundraise”.
Tokens through phases
- It all starts with Seeds
- Seeds grow into Trees
- Trees generate a yield in Mone
The idea is that Trees would be NFTs that are generating a passive yield of Mone, which would be a liquid ERC20 token to be used as a currency inside MetaGame, to pay for features, membership etc.
Stats & rarity attributes of the Tree tokens & the amounts of Mone they generate would be somewhat random but greatly influenced by the length of time a person has been “watering Seeds” as well as the total amount of Seeds watered.
Open questions
- Do Seed LPs gain more Trees or Trees with higher yield as reward for watering Seeds?
- What would be the minimum & maximum % yield/year generated by Trees?
- Do Trees instantly start generating Mone or is there a delay?
- How does watering Trees work; Does the yield change?
- How are workers compensated in Phase II & Phase III? Does Mone yield split to Tree holders & workers equally? Do MetaGame’s Trees yield enough Mone? Do workers earn Seeds? Is there another “Fertilizer” token, to be used for Trees?
- Should Mone token be subject to demurrage? As all fruit, it should decay & people would be incentivized to either spend it, donate it or water/fertilize Trees